


Nothing Mortal

by Corycides



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: F/F, Femslash February
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 16:05:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5934499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corycides/pseuds/Corycides
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mazikeen finds the small joys of incarnation</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Mortal

‘It’s  _ hot  _ today,’ the waitress sighed as she came into the bar, sucking the dregs of her iced stimulant without bothering to instill any sensuality. Pale pink hair was glued to her forehead with sweat. Mazikeen had fucked her twice, mostly for the same reason Lucifer had only done it once. The horny little devil tattoo on her round, pale ass.

He played at insouciance, but no soul or simulacrum in the created universe was more cognizant of his dignity than the Lightbringer.

One of the bar-tenders grinned and winked at her. ‘Hot as  _ balls _ ,’ he said.

They seemed to find it humorous. Mazikeen poured a glass of whiskey and added a shot of tabasco for kick. She lifted it, black nails tapping the glass, and drank.

‘Speaking of which,’ the pink girl said. ‘I don’t know how you wear leather this weather, Maz.’

‘We all suffer for beauty,’ Mazikeen said smoothly.

It was true, and nothing to do with the girl’s question. Hot? Mazikeen had been born on hot sands, pushed impatiently from her wicked mother’s wicked belly, and mentored under the spiritual scald of Sheol. Mortal heat didn’t touch her.

Nothing mortal touched Mazikeen.

_ Wearied  _ her at times, she would admit - particularly after the 100th variation of the ‘hot as balls’ conversation was traded across her bar like a shabby note of social currency. Her love for Lucifer was a thing of hooks and acid, lodged too deep in her to shift. It was immutable as her name. Still, there were nights - when men who thought mortal admiration gave them power slid their hand between her legs, when women who clung to youth as if it was salvation mocked and thought she did not know - when the pleasure of turning their wine to vinegar in their guts was not enough to sate her dissatisfaction.

She had abandoned all she knew, turned a cold shoulder to the embrace of her endless kin, to follow the Lightbringer to this slow, ineffectual place. The assumption had been that there would be, if not a point, at least wickedness.

‘I like your face,’ the fat man with the eyes like broken jars said. He passed a card across the bar with the confidence of someone who had what she wanted. ‘If you want to break into movies, call me sometime.’

Mazikeen pushed the card back to him. ‘I’m not an actress.’

He smirked. ‘C’mon, it’s LA. Everyone’s an actress, baby.’

She  _ could  _ reach over the bar and hook her fingers in his nostrils, ripping them open to flap and snort. He would look like the pig he was. She  _ could _ spit in the expensive whiskey he didn’t appreciate - an act that was more than spite, for a lilim born of snakes and scorpions - and watch him slowly bloat and rot like an aged peach.

Lucifer had forbidden her though. It was not a chain on her. She was a demon, disobedience was a central tenant of her understanding of the world. For Lucifer - for  _ now - _ she would indulge him.

‘Was he an actor,’ she asked, bracing her hands on the bar and leaning forwards. She breathed in, tasting the first chemical stir of doubt. Lucifer elicited confidences, the mask he played at being still  _ His  _ favoured child and trustworthy as the rising sun. For Mazikeen it was the sweaty guilt of joyless unions that spoke to her. She rolled her head to the side, dark hair falling over her face. ‘The pretty boy, you remember him don’t you? He had such beautiful eyes, reminded you so much of your lost Sammy. So much that afterwards you had to...wipe it away, beat it into meat that meant nothing. Just another ruined boy, lost boy.’

He blanched, the grease of his sins on him. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he dismissed her in a tight voice.

‘You should visit Sammy,’ Mazikeen said, pushing herself back off the bar. ‘He won’t even recognise you, never mind hate you. Not after what you did.’

He fled. The air outside would cool his fear, and by tomorrow he would have forgotten that he ever met a bartender with eyes as black as stones who knew his secrets.  _ He  _ had made this world, and  _ He _ did not care for it to be so disturbed. The lizard part of his brain, the bit that had driven his distant ancestors to flee the dark and the open and the deserts, would remember though. Fear of her would nest there - and she’d see what brood it hatched.

‘Impressive. I don't think I’ve ever seen Delaney give up that easy before.’

Mazikeen  wiped her thumb over her lower lip and gave the woman a sour look from under her lashes. Ah, apparently  _ He  _ had decided that the cherry on her night would be letting bland escape Pandora’s Box and come bother her.

‘Oh, I’ll see him again,’ Mazikeen said. ‘Want another Daddy Issues?’

Chloe’s mouth twists around words sour enough to make her pucker, but she holds her tongue. ‘Actually, I want to talk to you.’

‘About Daddy Issues?’

‘About...him.’

In demonic parlance  _ Him _ was almost exclusively referred to the Creator. It was obvious that Chloe meant a lowercase version, and she and Mazikeen only shared one penis in common.

‘Lucifer,’ Mazikeen said.

‘Yeah, what’s his deal.’

Mazikeen raised her eyebrows. ‘I thought you  _ didn't  _ want to talk about daddy issues?’

Laughter made Chloe’s eyes sparkle, the curve of her mouth as innocent of artifice as a pious child. It made Mazikeen sick. She could see no mystery to this mortal, she was an open book writ in a large hand for legibility.

‘You know him well then.’

No. He was the Lightbringer, the rebel, the Lord of Hell. He made it better to rule in hell than serve in heaven, then set them all to serving. He despised them not for rising up against him in the endless revolts of hell, but for the failure that stunk up the coals. Mazikeen had loved him since she first saw him, for longer than this woman’s  _ genes _ had walked the earth, but she would not say she knew him.

‘We have spent a lot of time together,’ she settled on. ‘Is this because you want to fuck him??’

She didn't blush. Mazikeen would have been forced to break her jaw for her if she had, so lucky for them both she resisted.

‘Would I need to ask your permission?’

That amused Mazikeen briefly, the idea of Lucifer’s endless parade of pretty boys and delicate girls handing her their CVs at the door turning the corners of her lips up in a smile.

‘Even immortals don't have the time to curate Lucifer’s sex life,’ she said. Across the bar, Chloe’s eyes twitched and a shudder ran down her spine, not fear but doubt. That was worse. Fear could be rationalised and explained away, doubt festered.

‘So, you’re a demon too?’ she asked, mockery lilting in her voice. ‘Lucifer and Beezelbub trying to break into Hollywood?’

That affronted Mazikeen on all the levels of her being. She was of the blood of Lilith, the First of her Kind, not some vomit-eating, fly-blown cherubim. Mazikeen had  _ never _ known heaven, and did not whine of it in her cups. 

‘I am Mazikeen,’ she said flatly. ‘Lucifer and Mazikeen.’

‘I don't remember that name from the Bible.’

Mazikeen laughed and pulled a beer from the fridge, ice melting in her fingers. ‘If your prophets had captured the entirety of Sheol in the pages of their book, humanity would have wept, laid down, and died,’ she said, setting the beer in front of Chloe. ‘On the house, they tell me it’s hot out.’

She walked away, leaving the bland to amuse itself and leave. It was an hour later - 200 drinks, two fights, and one weeping sleazebag later - that Mazikeen returned to that end of the bar and found Chloe still there. Still nursing the one beer.

‘You? Still?’

‘I don’t believe in demons.’

Mazikeen cocked her head to the side, amusement curling her mouth. ‘That’s fine. We’re not fairies; believe or not - we endure.’

Sucking the last dregs out of the bottle, Chloe braced her hands against the edge of the counter and pushed herself back. ‘It’s like something out of one my mom’s old movies,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘It has to be some sort of trick he’s pulling, hypnosis or-’

Mazikeen picked up the bottle, wrapping her fingers firmly around the neck, and smashed it on the edge of the bar. The noise made Chloe jump, nearly falling off her stool, and reach for her gun. Much good it would do her. She needn’t have worried, Mazikeen had other plans for it. She laid her hand on the table, fingers spread, and jammed the neck of the bottle into the back of her hand. Flesh tore and bones cracked, glass splintering as it gouged through soft skin and into the hard glassy stone of the counter.

‘What the fuck are you doing?!’ Chloe blurted, eyes huge and horrified. She was squirming out of her jacket, balling the light fabric up to use as a bandage.

Lifting her hand, blood itching as it ran down her wrist, Mazikeen displayed the injury and then pulled the bottle out. Her palm itched as it healed, the bones squirming under her skin like beetles.

‘Demonstrating.’

Chloe watched, mouth dropping open, until the healing was done. One hand lifted to cover her mouth, then she turned and puked on the floor. 

It turned out that there had been another few beers between the one Mazikeen had given her and now. Apparently beer-full stomachs didn’t react well to their understanding of the laws of the universe being violated.

Leaving pink-haired girl in charge of the bar, Mazikeen walked Chloe outside for some fresh hair. The blonde paced up and down through the narrow garden, swigging water from a bottle.

‘There has to be another explanation,’ she said.

‘Why?’ Mazikeen perched on the small, burn-pocked table, knee pulled up to her chest. She wasn’t sure why she was bothering - to please Lucifer? To see if she could see what he saw? 

Chloe gave her a sharp, angry look, shoving her hair back from her face with one hand. ‘Do you know many calls we get about demons and imps every week? Every  _ day?  _ Hundreds. And you know who makes those calls? Crazy people. So if I believe you...either I’m crazy or they’re right and we live in a world were demons exist. My little girl lives with a crazy woman, or in a world where Lucifer runs a bar. I don’t know which is worse.’

An owl swooped by over head, wings silent as it hunted bugs on the muggy air currents. Mazikeen tilted her head back to watch it. There had been, according to the news, an uptick in the number of owls and coyotes seen in the city. The wet nurses and nannies from Mazikeen’s childhood.

‘Or it could be both.’

She pulled a packet of cigarettes from her pocket and tapped one out, lighting it with a snap of her fingers. Why bother to hide the little things, once the cat was out of bag and damning souls. 

‘Those things are bad for you.’

‘No. They’re bad for you.’ She sucked in a lungful of tar and poisons, sour as the malebolges after a scorching. ‘The only demon in LA is me, Chloe Decker, and I have no interest in your child.’

Chloe turned sharply, jabbing a finger at Mazikeen. ‘What about Lucifer then? You said  _ you’re  _ the only demon.’

She exhaled, grey smoke floating in the air. ‘Lucifer is Lucifer. First of the Fallen, the rebel Lightbringer.’

‘Does he want my soul?’

Mazikeen laughed - a sharp, barking sound. ‘Mortals. You all think so highly of yourself, like we go around trying to tempt you all hours of the day and night. That we  _ need  _ to, when you do the job so handily yourselves.’

‘Isn’t that what cops do?’

‘Honey traps are the police’s preserve, Chloe,’ Mazikeen said, sliding off the table. ‘I don’t know what Lucifer wants with you - but it’ll end badly.’

‘Why.’

‘Because he’s  _ Lucifer _ .’ Mazikeen hopped off the table and strode across the garden, invading Chloe’s personal space. ‘Can you imagine him settling down, raising your rugrat, talking about his 401k, and doing Doctor’s visits? The family holidays alone would be…’ she leaned in and spat the word in Chloe’s ear. ‘Hell.’

Chloe flinched back from her. ‘I...I need to go home,’ she said. ‘I need a cab.’

No. This was the...vector...in Lucifer’s humanity contamination. Understanding that was important.  _ Manipulating  _ that was important.

‘I’ll give you a lift,’ she said.

The bike was the one unalloyed joy that Mazikeen had found in this world. It was simple, it was environmentally unsound, and it was  _ fast.  _ If she ever went home again, she’d find a way to take with her. Chloe clung to her as she sped through the streets, peeling in and out of the cars. One ugly yellow sports car tried to cut her off. She veered and came back, kicking the side of his car with a heeled boot.

That was a benefit of the bike too. 

The kiss at the door was a surprise. Watery beer and a hint of vomit. Mazikeen wondered briefly if this was why Lucifer’s charms didn’t work on the woman. It didn’t feel like the answer, but Mazikeen didn’t care. She was a demon, there was a mortal tongue in her mouth, and it wasn’t in her DNA - or what passed for it - to resist temptation.

She pushed into the kiss, cupping her hand around the back of Chloe’s neck. Sharp teeth nipped at Chloe’s lip, drawing a salty bead of blood and a low whimper. They stumbled backwards into the house, Chloe muttering something about the child being with her father for the night.

‘Good,’ Mazikeen said. ‘Screams often confuse the young ones.’

Chloe took a sharp breath, inhaling Mazikeen. ‘Talk less.’

Chloe's bed was huge and white, smelling of laundry detergent and chastity. One Mazikeen could help her be rid off. She stripped Chloe out of her jeans and boots, exposing long tanned legs and surprisingly lacy panties. Perhaps she had been planning to do more than talk to Lucifer tonight.

The idea had a sweetness of its own.

She pressed her mouth against the lace covered juncture of Chloe’s thighs, tongue and teeth pressed against the softness. Her hands ran up Chloe’s thighs, nails scraping along the tender flesh until it marked.

Rough-callused, practical hands clenched in her hair, pressing her closer, as Chloe arched her hips up into her. 

There was nothing sweet about it, nothing honeyed. It was bitter sweat and the salt of fluids, Sheets rucked under their bodies, tangled around their legs. Mazikeen’s sharp teeth and the broken noises she coaxed from Chloe with her clever fingers and a thumb scraping over the tender nub of her clit.

‘Maz-i-keen,’ Chloe mewled, voice cracking.

She slept eventually. Mazikeen stole a breathless handful of minutes, before the horror of sleep drove her back to her feet. How mortals who had spent half a lifetime in sleep, given horrors or delights at the distant whim of Dream, could find Sheol fearful was beyond her. She wandered around the house, exploring the cupboards with the conscience-less interest of the damned, until she grew bored. Then she watched late night TV, finding one of the films that Chloe’s mother was in. 

Apparently a goateed Lucifer had decided to make her his bride. That was worth watching. That was worth bothering to get up and get popcorn for.

It was six am when the ex delivered the progeny back to the door. He gave Mazikeen a suspicious look, but she lied blithely and he left her the girl.

‘Are you a friend of Lucifer’s?’ the child asked.

Mazikeen crouched down, resting her elbows on her knees. Her gaze was bright and curious as she studied the child. Lucifer had said the child was unexceptional - but power could blind.‘You  _ are  _ a perceptive little one aren’t you?’ she said. ‘I am.’

‘He’s funny.’

‘I’m not. Are you hungry?’

She nodded. ‘I like bacon and eggs and...and mushrooms.’

It was an hour later that Chloe finally woke up, stumbling half-dressed and panicked out of her bedroom to find Trixie colouring intently on the floor. She was explaining her colouring choices solemnly to Mazikeen. She had gotten dressed by that point.

‘It’s yellow, because I think that’s what the sky is like there.’

‘Close,’ Mazikeen said. She smirked under Chloe’s baffled, frightened look and stood up, giving the child a scuff of her tangled hair. ‘I have to go, little one. Be good.’

Chloe followed her out onto the porch, awkward and shifty. ‘You like children?’

A sharp smile twisted Mazikeen’s face. ‘I have siblings,’ she said. ‘At least you only have one, you don’t even have to worry about them eating each other.’

It had only happened  _ once _ , but the expression of horror on Chloe’s face made the exaggeration worth it.

  
  
  



End file.
